An Elementary Insight of Silica Gel Packets

This is the age of internet and online shopping is greatly admired around the whole world. The delivery process of online purchasing is very clean and convenient. The products are packaged well & safe. You must have observed some small white packets, inserted in almost all the new boxes. They are called “silica gel packets”. Now, you remember right? Today, we will try to find out some details of these packets and why they are used in almost everywhere.

Silica gel is a desiccant which has the power to absorb moisture. These packets are basically used to control the moisture and humidity and also to absorb the HC1, CO2, C12 etc. and keep the things, inside the packet absolutely moisture-free and dry. These packets are produced from silicon dioxide (SiO2) which works effectively to protect the food products, tablets and capsules from the moisture that are often found inside the packaging.

These sachets have various uses in the human life. Though they are commonly found in the bags of beef jerky or dried seaweed containers or vitamin bottles or in boxes of new shoes yet, these sachets help you to rescue your wet cell-phone or even slow-down the silverware or prolonging the longevity of jack-o’-lantern and most commonly, it prevents your GYM locker from smelling really awful.

You unpack the new boxes and you throw out the silica gel sachets. This is the common scenario with most of us but you will be surprised to know that if you find at some point that the absorbing quality of these silica packets are running low, you can recharge these pouches. It is the best part of them. You can do the same on the oven. You need to follow the below mentioned instructions.

Instructions to recharge silica gel packets:

Firstly, you need to remove the gel from the paper packets.

spread the silica gel on a cooking sheet.

Keep the temperature at around 2500F.

Bake the gel for few hours.

after this, keep the silica gel in an airtight container until the time you use them again.

There is another concern with these gel sachets that if someone eats the gel from these packets, what would be the consequences? The warning of “do not eat it” is invariably mentioned on the pack, despite if someone eats them, nothing harmful would happen. Around 40% of its weight is absorbed into water and that’s why nothing to be worried if you’ve eaten that by mistake. Hence, these are some basic yet useful information about silica gels and next time when you find it with a new packaging, don’t throw them away but keep them for further use.

Related Articles

In 1998 the European Union decided that cobalt chloride possess health risk and is dangerous to the environment. So they prohibited the use of Silica Gel Blue or Blue Silica Gel as it contains Cobalt chloride in it. And hence the product vanished from the American and European market. But most of the industries need Indicator substances, so Silica Gel orange is developed to cover this need. It is also known as Enviro gel. The main ingredient in indicating silica gel orange is silicon dioxide, it uses organic substance instead cobalt chloride for the purpose of indicating the humidity. It Continue Reading->

Silica gel is produced synthetically from sodium silicate, which is a porous but granular form of silica. It is utilized as a desiccant or moisture adsorbent to manage humidity levels locally in order to avoid degradation of the goods.Silica gel blue crystals are known asself-indicating type desiccants and are prepared by infusing white silica crystals in cobalt chloride. These crystals are hard in nature and are placed in breather because of their quality of absorbing moisture considerably. Breathing process of a transformer includes in and out flow of air due to thermal contractions and expansions created because of oil inside Continue Reading->

In order to protect foods from contamination, this mainly comes from moisture or the presence of other toxic gases that may create an odour that is very unpleasant, silica gel is one of the most favoured absorbing agents known. It is important to protect the shelf life of foods that are packed and must retain their original properties or freshness for a long duration of time. Silica gel is known to be a key absorbent of unwanted atmospheric hazards. The Composition of Silica Gel One of the most important features of silica gel is that it is porous in nature Continue Reading->